Some 3,900,000 Americans over the age of 14 declared their religion as Jewish, the United States Bureau of the Census reported here this week-end on the basis of a projection of a sample survey covering 35,000 families.
The bureau obtained this result in reply to a question: “What is your religion?” It established that 96 percent of the American people list themselves as belonging to some religious faith. In the sample survey, the first on religious affiliation ever taken by the bureau, it was also established that some 79,000,000 persons consider themselves Protestant and 30,700,000, Roman Catholic.
Although the sample survey asked a question about religious affiliation, the Census Bureau announced several months ago that because of opposition from a number of organizations and individuals it would not ask such a question in the 1960 national census. Major Jewish organizations and civic groups voiced opposition to the original plan to include such a question in the census. They insisted it violated the Constitutional American principle of separation of church and state.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
